Peak Oil Solutions: Biofuels and GMO's

One Step Solution to a Two Step Ditch

With the spectre of peak oil, global climate change, loss of biodiversity, political tensions surrounding access to natural resources, world-wide epidemics and poverty we as a nation and a species are forced to look at our behavior and how it impacts our world.

Many of the solutions being presented by our political leaders are compounding the problems. The whole rush to the biofuels "solution" proposed by both Al Gore and George H. Bush are good political examples of how to turn a problem into a disaster. The proposed use of our most fertile cropland to provide fuel from the most energy-intensive plants (corn, sorghum, soy, and sugar cane) creates a food deficit, further destroys remnant native ecosystems, while at the same time accelerates the use of fossil fuels to create biofuels. Fertilizer, after all, is a byproduct of gas and oil. Behind these quasi-solutions to peak oil lies the greed for more profits at the expense of the natural world. In virtually every instance the only road to sustainability is the one paved with the bricks of individual life style change. We are past the age of the technological fix and are faced with the need of social fixes.

Most of the changes that we must make are not really that onerous but are simply inconvenient. Taking the time to discover what food is grown locally and purchasing that rather than our current eating habits that represent 1500 miles of transportation per bite; we could be supporting the local farmers in our community by eating close to home and at the same time decrease fuel use and CO2 emissions.

Learning to garden, to grow at least few things to reduce the need to rip out some distant mountain side or a valley for a monoculture of a commercial cropland has some significant beneficial effect, locally and globally. Developing our homes toward energy-efficiency and resource conservation by harvesting rainwater, planting edible plants, and using the sun for space and water heating are simple to accomplish and in the current political climate may provide you with tax benefits. Carpooling, using a bus, switching to a bike all allow us to meet our neighbors, get in shape and reduces not only our financial overhead, but our ecological footprint.

The latest technological fix is of course going to be trialed in Africa - if no one noticed the starvation of millions during the "green revolution", perhaps they won't notice the introduction of genetically modified seed (gmo) being promoted by Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Brothers. They have managed to get Kofi Annan to shill for them and Monsanto is footing the bill for Kenyan agricultural extention agents. All of this in the name of saving Africans from starvation. Heard of any of this in anyones presidential platform?

How does one fight such financial behemoths as Bill Gates, Rockefeller Brothers, Monsanto, and Archer Daniels Midland, especially if you are African? This is the slimey underbelly of a capitalist system gone mad and it is totally hidden from view. It makes it very difficult to get too concerned with whether Obama is more elitist than Hillary or McCaine.

Who will save the traditional seeds of Africa, where is Nikolai Vavilov when we need him? How did it happen that African scientists and farmers have no say in their future? The same way it happened that we elected George Bush for two terms. It seems to me that we have perhaps passed many of the dreaded tipping points and it is time to plant a garden (open pollinated seeds of course), and get to know our neighbors. It is after all spring!

Sustainable Corporations?

With the exception of Carlos Louge (an Argentinean Economist), Donna Morton (a Canadian Economist), Paul Stammets (an US Mycologist), Roberto Perez (a Cuban permaculturalist), Robin Francis (an Australian Permacuture Teacher), and Declan Kennedy (an Irish Permaculturist), all of the other presenters were representative of an emerging new corporate model “the sustainable corporation”.

I think that the non corporate presenters had much more to offer in the way of solutions and ethics. I think that all of us keep hoping that the corporate world has something to teach or offer us that will make us more effective and able to affect change on a much larger scale. After this conference I think that quite the opposite is true and that we should lay the myth of big is better or more effective to rest. Perhaps its time to dust off Shumacher's “Small is Beautiful” and have another look.

There is much more that I would like to write about but I feel that I need more time for my thoughts to gestate and that they could use a good marinating in talk with my peers during the convergence. I am still convinced that Permaculture is the best show in town!

Limits to Sustainability - some musings

The theme of the conference was invisible structures, particularly finance and sustainable corporations. We heard presentations from some of the top foundations and corporations in Brazil. Two very large banks presented their sustainability programs. Other groups spoke of their Corporate Social Responsibility Programs.
For the most part I was under-impressed but I did come away with some provocative and new thoughts.

If one applies pattern to invisible structures then one has to figure out what are human patterns and how do they work. What seems glaringly obvious is that there is an order of scale problem. Rivers and trees have a limit to the orders of branching, but human constructs seem to be able to ignore limits. This is true of economics which allows one percent of mankind to control 40% of the total resource base of the planet, and of agriculture which allows a corporation to farm tens of thousands of hectares. Both of these examples are examples of exploitive systems. You cannot operate on such large scales without being extremely exploitative both of the environment and of humans. If this is true then to talk in terms of the sustainability of City Bank is an oxymoron.

Sustainability was the key word of every corporate presenter but not once did any of them give a definition of sustainability or their understanding of it. Tony Anderson who is an old permaculture teacher and designer from Denmark was of the opinion that to be sustainable one had to be constrained to ones bioregion – or that was the appropriate order of scale. Once you start importing and exporting product and money in and out of the bioregion the bioregion inevitable suffers. I’m sure we will spend some time hashing this out during the convergence.